IRS Claims the Dog Ate Their Homework

Not exactly but close. IRS employees are claiming that they lost the Lois Lerner’s emails because her computer crashed. The Washington Times reports:

The IRS has told Congress that it has lost some of former employee Lois G. Lerner’s emails from 2009 through 2011, including those she sent to other federal agencies, the House’s top tax-law writer said Friday.

The agency blamed a computer crash for the mishap.

Rep. Dave Camp, chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, said he was stunned that it took more than a year into the investigation for the IRS to inform Congress that it didn’t have those emails.

“The fact that I am just learning about this, over a year into the investigation, is completely unacceptable and now calls into question the credibility of the IRS’s response to congressional inquiries,” Mr. Camp said. “There needs to be an immediate investigation and forensic audit by Department of Justice as well as the Inspector General.”

Mr. Camp said the emails lost were “critical years” from the beginning of the targeting of conservative groups.

He said the White House must now get involved and demand other federal departments and agencies scour their records for emails to or from Ms. Lerner, since those records will not be available from the IRS.

“Frankly, these are the critical years of the targeting of conservative groups that could explain who knew what when, and what, if any, coordination there was between agencies,” Mr. Camp said. “Instead, because of this loss of documents, we are conveniently left to believe that Lois Lerner acted alone.”

Camp can wish that the White House would force federal agencies to cooperate, but I am pretty sure they will never do so.